Matt D

The Cena comments on Stern are not good. If he had stopped with valuing love and friendship but also valuing accountability and didn't say a word after that, maybe it could have been ok, but it was not good.

I think it has to do with Kojima.

I had no idea there was a Nicieza Cable title.

2/28/87: Koshinaka/Hashimo vs Takada/Yamazaki: This was a HH that I missed. It's cool to see Hashimoto in with these guys and he really does give his team an edge that they wouldn't have if it was just Koshinaka/Mutoh or Koshinaka/Takano. I've said it before, but he's a problem to be solved. He's too big, too strong, too fast, too technical. You could fill his stats out of this was a video game and he'd just start with too many points. Maeda does too, relatively, but he's not here. It sort of forces Koshinaka into a role where, hierarchy and experience against these guys be damned, he comes off like the lower guy on the totem pole. Yamazaki is just happy to be there and it's a lot of fun to watch him headbutt and kick Koshinaka. Takada wins this pretty definitively with the scorpion on Koshinaka actually. 5/25/87: Maeda/Takada (c) vs Fujiwara/Yamazaki: One cool thing about Maeda and Takada having the belts is that they'll take on all comers, even their fellow UWF buddies. This cycled a bit early with Takada vs Yamazaki and then Fujiwara and then Maeda in against Fujiwara and all of this was the UWF goodness you'd want with sharp kicks (Yamazaki and Takada) and tight holds and jointlocks. Maeda and Fujiwara felt like a big deal as always. Yamazaki could make a ton of headway with the kicks until he got caught. Then it didn't go so well. Still at any point he could sneak in a kick out of nowhere and turn the tide. Maeda was still bandaged from the SSM incident which helped rationalize why he might have been a step behind. Fujiwara certainly targeted the head when he got a chance, including a nasty beating in the corner as he is want to do. They escalated to some bombs (Suplexes, tombstones, Crossface chicken wings, etc) down the stretch but Maeda finally drove Yamazaki back into the corner off of a German attempt and hit the spin wheel kick, a cradle suplex, and a body scissored chickenwing for the win. Good stuff though. This was 31 on the DVDVR set and I can see that.

Interesting. We're on a marathon here instead of a sprint. People (who I actually listen to) tend to think this was maybe the best period in Michaels' career. Rose and Somers were absolutely leading them through this. For your match I had to download it from dailymotion and upload to Youtube because DM wasn't playing well with me. But that was ok. Here it is for people: It wasn't what I was expecting. Most Arison I've seen is just Aja Kong destroying people. I got a little worried in the opening feeling out process when they were doing spots and really posting up in advance for it. They both had at least 5 years experience at this point so that sort of surprised me. Just real, pause, stop, look, post, go, feeling to it. Things got a lot better when they were either throwing kicks (most especially Ohmukai who was an absolute beast in there) or working the mat. The matwork actually felt shoot-style-esque as it got going. A lot of taking small openings and making the most of them or grasping for whatever might possibly work, hooking any free-floating limb at any moment as opposed to more elaborate and collaborative entry points. They got to elaborate places in the end but it came from the opportunistic sort of desperate grappling more than anything else. In this, Fukawa had a clear advantage, just willing to leap at Ohmukai at any point and latch on to her trying to pry off a limb. Unfortunately for her, Ohmukai had a clear strength advantage and was able to turn a lot of those attempts back upon Fukawa. There was a big pivot point mid match when she tried to do that and placed Fukawa onto the top only for Fukawa to catch a strike and fly off the top into a cross arm breaker attempt. She targeted the arm more than anything else, and you got the sense the finish was about Ohmukai adding insult to injury by returning the favor, but Fukawa should have worked on the legs because Ohmukai certainly used them to kick the crap out of her. Like I said, some of the stand up spots felt performative in how they were set up and there were times that they were just going and going instead of selling (though that was counteracted by the greatest tool a lot of 90s joshi has going for it when it comes to selling, actual exhaustion) but the plucky technician vs the powerhouse kickmonster (with both of them able to dabble in the other's art) worked for me overall. I don't know if I'd want to live in this stuff but it was ok to visit. We shall reconvene next month.

All that matters tonight is that we get some solid Jarrett/Dark Order interaction. I've never been a fan of BTE driving major storylines but I'm totally fine with it impacting the B story of a throwaway match on Rampage.

And Cassidy accepted because the Kingdom have been beating up all of his friends and Roddy has been dodging him by putting the title match off to Revolution, so at least he could get his hands on Taven.

It would be fine now that the Punk cloud isn't over everyone's head, I think. There were pros and cons to it when it came to enjoying his matches. I see the strings a little bit more now in ways that I both appreciate and regret.

Yeah look, if I'm Adam Cole, I'm worried with the influx of talent. He's another guy who basically spent his entire career being rewarded for a lot of the wrong lessons. He's going to have one major, major advantage when he finally comes back. The crowd hasn't seen him take a beating for a long time. A goal should be to withhold it from them for as long as possible. He needs to bump sparingly and stall heavily and try to get real heat. Less about workrate classics. More about watching Zbyszko and only bumping towards the end of the match when it matters the most. For MJF, upon his return, he needs to keep watching Dusty and not try to compete with Ospreay/Omega/Sammy. He needs to offer an alternative and double down instead of hedging like he has been.

On some level it's like 84-87 WWF where guys who were pushed hard in a territory like Martel or JYD end up in a tag team or just lower down the card.

He has a lot of storyline weight underpinning him right now and he probably gets one chance, when healthy again, to really do something with that. Again, I think the hottest act is pairing him with Britt on screen. I can see a world where two-three years down the line he's primarily used as a guy who makes media appearances and streams to get attention for the brand. His best attribute is how nice and likable he is as a human being. He's just about the age right now where Michael Hayes became Dok Hendrix.

If we're really going to have Okada, Ospreay, and Mercedes as basically weekly characters in a month's time, that will change the feel of the shows. That's basically three new segments each week (and three segments that other people aren't getting). It'll probably shake out more like 4-5 segments every two weeks but still. They almost have to make Rampage more important to compensate, even if that just means giving it to guys like Page, Darby, Cassidy, etc.

So I don't know what I don't know since I don't follow current CMLL too closely but... A lot of the CMLL roster is in Japan for Fantasticamania That means certain people like Lady Frost will be back in Mexico to help with the rosters for a bit. There is no Collision on Saturday due to the NBA All Star Weekend Seems like a good Friday for the BCC to invade?

Finished Link Between Worlds. Charming ending. Very good game. I spent way too long stumbling around trying to find the Sand Rod not realizing you get it just in the natural course of the game. I think I would have done a deal where you could get all the basic weapons from Ravio but then would get unique items to the game (the rods for instance) from chests in dungeons? I'm on to Metroid 2 3DS now. I'm early days still but the missiles don't feel weighty enough. The movement feels a little light/floaty altogether. I'm used to Metroid feeling heavier somehow. Zone 1 until you get the magnet ball is feeling a little claustrophobic too. We'll see if that changes. I also can't counter the metroids for the life of me. I'm not sure if you can only counter them when they're not glowing or if i my timing is just off.

5/20/87: INOKI VS FUJIWARA: Oof, I missed this. My primary source has most stuff I could possibly need but this one popped up in 2013 or so and then again a few years ago and yeah... 87 is not actually a big year for recent NJPW HHs but certain other years upcoming are (83-84 actually is for what it's worth). Anyway we're still in the IWGP Series so we get a bunch of weirdo singles matches. This was blurry and far off but you can mostly tell who is who and while Fujiwara will do neat close up stuff, Inoki won't, so you don't really need to see it in too great fidelity. The story of the match is that Inoki would have to do tricked out stuff that you would see from him more in 77 than 87 like a flying headscissors or some bridges and then Fujiwara would just shrug it off and dismantle him easily. Eventually after a cobra twist attempt that Fujiwara answered with a bunch of headbutts, Inoki hit an almost desperation grazing enzuigiri (which I will never spell correctly, but the internet says that's it) and took over for a bit but Fujiwara jammed him on a second suplex attempt with the armbar. Eventually Inoki was outside and Fujiwara tried to suplex him only for Inoki to float over and hit a(nother) desperation belly to back for 2. He stomped him a few times and hit the enzuigiri again for the pin. This then led immediately to the Sakaguchi/SSM thing. I have to go back for a Hash/Koshinaka vs Takada/Yamazaki match from Feb too. That sounds interesting. 5/25/87: Inoki vs Sakaguchi: Another of these league matches. What's interesting about Inoki is that he's ALWAYS the main character of his story, so a lot of his major matches are about him dealing with the unique challenge of his specific opponent. With Fujiwara it was the skill and mastery. With Sakaguchi it's the size combined with technique and a fire out of the corner. They kept the matwork fairly basic but it meant that Sakaguchi had an overall advantage. Deeper in, Inoki hit that grazing enzuigiri again which let him take over a bit more, including some shots in the corner. Sakaguchi seemed a little reluctant the first time he had him in there in return, but then opened up the second time as they were giving it their all. Inoki tried for the leg including a figure four. Sakaguchi was able to come back and really worked the arm. Eventually, however, he went for the atomic drop and hurt his leg again. Inoki hit a bunch of enzuigiris, tried for the octopus, tried for the cobra twist, and finally put him down with one last back brain kick and a second octopus. Battle of the titans feel here.

I like Sydal. He's sort of the only Sydal that they need (Sorry, brother Mike). In as I don't think they need to hire guys like Ziggler because they already have him. He's crisp in execution, pretty good at building and layering matches, always overdelivers, and isn't as bland and mechanical as Daniels (who I like better now than fifteen years ago because he has a bit more old grit to him, but...). He's a great lower mid card babyface to make people look better. As for the Mistico match, it was ok but thought it needed a bit more to the finish. Probably best to just end it with La Mistica since no one knew that the Spanish Fly was a viable finisher for Mistico. (Schiovane didn't know La Mistica was either but that's fine). I haven't seen a Star, Jr. or Esfinge match in forever but I do have some concerns about them relative to who we've seen so far. And I'll bury this in the weekly thread but a lot of the misgivings I had for the build to Bucks vs Sting/Darby were alleviated by having Sting and Darby do other things for the first few weeks and heavy usage of blood which always makes everything better. There are still weeks to go though. The Bucks "acting their age" is long overdue and helps the act but I'm still not quite to the point where I'd rather see them get beat up and get their simulated comeuppance relative to just skipping that match and watching something else instead (like I did with Swerve vs Hangman: I watched Adam Priest vs JD Drake and suggest you seek it out).

@Casey It's the 10th of the month and time to think about this. I have no idea what you've seen and what you haven't, but I'm assuming the answer is "not much," so I'm going to give you the sort of stuff i wouldn't normally give someone because it's just too "mainstream" within our circles and you tell me if you've seen it or not. Let's start with Blood on the Sand: Rose/Somers vs Midnight Rockers. Have you seen it?

5/18/87: Maeda vs Saito: This was Super Strong Machine making a super strong impact. I have no idea if this was his debut out of nowhere or if he'd been in the crowd/interviews/etc., but he absolutely assaults Maeda before the match, leaving him a bloodied mess. This was shocking, one of the most shocking things I've seen in 86-87 NJPW, not just for the fact it comes out of nowhere, but also because Maeda was Maeda. He was presented as larger than life as one of the most dangerous people alive, tall and powerful and legitimate. He was incredibly good at portraying himself as dominant in matches. Obviously that led to the Andre situation a year before and left matches (like a singles with Inoki or, as I understand it, Choshu) on the table. But it meant he was protected and the crowd obviously believed in him and to see him absolutely demolished and tossed into the ring bloodied and battered was astonishing. Once Choshu got him in there he shifted between hitting the Saito Suplex and a lariat, tried for a pin, got two, went back to the well. He put on a Scorpion Deathlock and a crab and Maeda was just limp and helpless. All he could do was survive. This was an immense amount of blood. After Saito would hit a lariat, there'd be blood all over his arm. It was a wild scene. Eventually, Maeda started to fire back and the crowd went nuts. He staggered Saito, hit a rough spin wheel kick and then one that knocked him out. He rushed right after but Saito slammed him into the post a few times and hit the Saito suplex on the floor for the countout win. Post match, they attacked him but Fujiwara AND the NJPW mainstays like Sakaguchi (which was new) came out to stop it. 5/20/87: Sakaguchi vs Super Strong Machine: HH. Just a minute or two before Saito got involved and it became one of those massive gang war scrums that I picture in the years to come. I know intellectually we're heading to NOW vs NEW very very soon but I just don't get how we get there as opposed to having a year of NJPW (Inoki/Sakaguchi/Fujinami/Mutoh/Takano/etc.) vs UWF vs Choshu/Saito/SSM/Hase/maybe Kimura. I guess it'll make more sense as I get closer. 5/20/87: Hashimoto vs Yamazaki: I don't want to invoke him right now, but young Hash really feels like early broke in WWE. He's slowly moving up the card but comes off as this force that I can only describe as unfair. He's too big. He's too quick. He hits too hard. He can go on the mat. He can counter your best stuff. He has bombs. Yamazaki had no shot against him early until he started to throw the kicks. Once he did, Hash caught them and shoved him down like Jumbo facing Kawada in 89. Eventually Yamazaki would get an edge here or there but Hash just had an answer. He basically missed a corner charge and slipped on a banana peel to lose due to hierarchy here. I do feel bad for Yamazaki that he hasn't advanced since 1/86 and he actually feels further behind due to some other people being pushed. I think he does have pushes in the future but he almost never makes TV now (This was a HH). Anyway, Hash is absolutely on his way. 5/25/87: Scott Hall vs Konga the Barbarian: Just a few minutes. Hall's stuff all looks fine but he is lacking something. Barb hit a pile driver on the floor, yikes. Hall hit a powerslam and got hyped up but Konga's foot was on the rope. Hall hit a big lariat after but got flipped over on the flying body press off the top. I'm not sure this was put together smartly but it did have a few good hossfight moments.

@Curt McGirtCheck this one out. It's not long and it's a wild angle. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxiTRkmCbk7Bjh44x0aSQsI29Bz5VaPj/view?usp=sharing Will hopefully write about it tomorrow.

Baker is probably the exact shot in the arm that Cole's stable needs to get some actual heat.

Rated R FTR is always on the table too.

5/11/87: Maeda vs Hacksaw Higgins: Higgins had some pretty solid stuff actually. He looked like a scuzzier Scott Norton sort of. Maeda controlled him early with the arm and a headlock but when he turned things around with a belly to back, it was really nice. He lifted Maeda up and turned his body away before coming back down with it. He had a very nice butterfly suplex too and kept Maeda at bay as he kept trying to come back. Eventually he missed a top rope splash and ate the spin wheel kick (which I think they called a "knee kick?"). Pretty effective 6 or 7 minute match here and it kind of makes me want to track down more Higgins. 5/11/87: Fujinami/Takano vs Saito/Scott Hall: Crowd was buzzing for Fujinami vs Saito to start. They worked some really nice Saito armdrags. I've said it before but Fujinami is the best ever at hitting the ropes. Hall was relatively huge. He knew what he was doing in there but something was probably still missing. He had these great jumping elbow drops I don't remember him using later. He also hit a jackhammer which may or may not have been intentional but it was still neat to see in 87. Hall and Saito controlled a good amount of this. It had a hot tag and some comeback but they were able to shut them down and Saito won with the prison lock, which is sort of a kneeling figure four with the opponent turned sieways and the back leg grapevined. The replay at the end was a Hall clothesline. 5/18/87: Inoki/Kimura vs St. Clair/Konga: FINALLY we get Kimura asserting himself with the new boxing skills. In this case, it's launching a barrage of shots to knock Konga around the ring. It's only when he punches him repeatedly too close into the corner that St. Clair gets a cheapshot and take over. We only had a few minutes of this overall but Kimura seems to have figured out how to make it click. Konga had his usual fun, if clunky, power stuff: a spinebuster and catching Kimura off the ropes (presumably as he tried to do the leg lariat but it was unclear) with the powerslam. Leg lariat to St. Clair led to the hot tag which is a great use of it. Nice finishing bit where St Clair held Inoki and he kicked up as Barbarian charged, then mule kicked to get St. Clair back, then Dropkicked to get Barbarian out, and then hit the enziguiri on St. Clair for the win. 5/18/87: Sakaguchi/Takano vs Higgins/Smirnoff: Smirnoff really was just a guy. He had relative size and would bump but yeah. Nice to see Sakaguchi as it's been a bit since he made TV. Early on they control on Smirnoff's arm. Higgins comes in and shuts things down with his very nice belly to back. He hits a pile driver too. Smirnoff hits Sakaguchi with a solid knee drop to the throat but misses on the second. That basically lets Sakaguchi take over on the knee (if you call an atomic drop doing that) and winning with a half crab. It's good to see a half crab finish things occasionally since it makes the move matter more in other matches.

You could have Copeland come out for his promo on Saturday, start to lean towards being in contention for the TNT title and then do an Ospreay video challenge and run Garcia vs Christian at the PPV. But yeah they'd have to deal with it somehow.

I can see a world where they debut Ospreay teaming with Jericho and Sammy against the Callis family. This is a pretty ridiculous world but maybe it's the one we live in. Edit: For what it's worth I'd debut him against Copeland.

Here's this for now: Hechicero vs Casas: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13LJZEheuKFLAIxEDArvQhrT5EwiCk93n/view Hechicero vs Rush: